Little Things Add Up

Subtle Discrimination Follows Non-white Travelers

July 16, 2000|By Karen Brown Dunlap. Special to the Tribune. Karen Brown Dunlap is dean of The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. Poynter researcher David Shedden also contributed to this report.

They are just little things. Small, easy-to-ignore things.

A woman settles in her First Class seat and buckles up. The flight attendant approaches, leans over and asks, "Are you sure you're in the right seat?"

Police pull over a driver, ask for his license, tell him they're just checking, then let him go.

Tourists, after spending a few days at their hotel, sense that they're getting lesser service than others in comparable rooms.

A couple finish a meal in a restaurant, notice the bill includes a tip and wonder if everyone else is charged the same.

Just little things.

Then a big hotel settles a multimillion-dollar suit for discriminating against African-American customers. Legislative hearings focus on racial profiling against Latino and African-American drivers. A merchant admits he discriminates against African-Americans. Suddenly, the little things don't seem so small.

Book the tickets. Reserve the rooms. Pack the luggage. Anticipate the joy, and brace for the unexpected. If you're non-white and you're traveling, prepare for the excess baggage of race.

Forty years ago, African-Americans expected hassles when they traveled. "Hotels were segregated. So were restaurants," said Jake Henderson Jr., an attorney with Henderson Travel Service of Silver Spring, Md. "You had to have the Masons or a friend tell you where you could stop along the way."

Today most hassles are small, but they still add up to big frustrations.

Millions of African-Americans travel each year. In a recent study by the Travel Industry Association of America, about 64 percent of African-American households reported traveling. That's less than the 79 percent of European-American families who reported traveling, but still a sizable population.

Many enjoy the miles. Consider Drs. McDonald and Jamye Williams of Nashville. Retirement from the faculty of Tennessee State University gave them more time to crisscross the country and go abroad. Now in their 70s, they travel almost every month. They attend meetings of the NAACP and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, serve on college boards, fulfill speaking engagements and visit family and friends.

Years ago, they marched in civil rights demonstrations and saw signs prohibiting service to African-Americans. But today, race is not an issue for them in traveling.

"I don't see any problems," Jamye Williams said. "Stewardesses and others are very nice, and I see many more blacks traveling."

For others, TWB (traveling while black) can be a different kind of trip.

DeNeen Brown, an award-winning writer for The Washington Post, had her mind on her next story as she boarded a plane in Baltimore. In addition to a story assignment, her company had given her a First Class ticket. She mentally checked her packing and her reporting plans as she stored her gear. That's when a flight attendant approached and asked, "Are you sure you're in the right seat?"

Brown carried a backpack instead of a roll-on bag. She dressed casually and wore her usual hairstyle of long braids. And there was something else. "I was the only black person in First Class," she said.

African-Americans aren't alone in experiencing bias while traveling. Diversity consultant Lee Mun Wah, who is Chinese, has his own stories of travel and color. At a meeting in New York with about a dozen corporate leaders and 20 diversity consultants, Mun Wah said, "Every person of color here experienced racism while traveling here."

Just when it seems the slights are exaggerated or imagined, stuff happens.

In April, a government report on U.S. citizens re-entering the United States in fiscal 1997 and 1998 found that African-American men and women were nearly nine times as likely as white men and women to be X-rayed after being frisked or patted down, while Latinos were nearly four times as likely.

The study, by the congressional General Accounting Office, also showed that the searches were not justified by a higher rate of discovery of contraband, particularly in the case of African-American women. They were less than half as likely to be found carrying contraband as white women.

African-American women also were nearly twice as likely to be strip-searched on suspicion of smuggling drugs as white men and women, and three times as likely as African-American men to be strip-searched.

Last year, at least four cases linked racism and the travel industry.

In December, the U.S. Justice Department filed a discrimination suit against the Adam's Mark hotel chain after a national investigation found evidence that the hotel charged African-American customers higher rates and provided inferior service.